Best Things to Do in Madrid

Madrid's list is shorter than Rome's or London's, and that is a relief. Most of what matters fits into three or four days, with time left over for long lunches.

1. The Prado. Velázquez's Las Meninas, Goya's Black Paintings and Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights in one building. Give it a morning, not an hour. Our museums guide has a route.
2. The Royal Palace. One of the largest royal palaces in Europe, still used for state ceremonies. The Throne Room and the Royal Armoury are the highlights, and the royal palace guide links it to a walk through old Madrid.
3. Retiro Park. Rent a rowing boat on the big lake under the Alfonso XII monument, then walk to the Palacio de Cristal, a glass pavilion used for art installations. The rose garden peaks in May and June.
4. Guernica at the Reina Sofía. Picasso's painting of the bombing of a Basque town in 1937, hung with the sketches he made for it. If you see only one room in the Reina Sofía, make it this one.
5. The Plaza Mayor and around. The seventeenth-century arcaded square is the centrepiece of Habsburg Madrid. Look at it, then eat elsewhere: the terraces on the square are for the view, not the food.
6. Tapas in La Latina. Cava Baja and the streets around it are lined with tapas bars. Sunday, after the Rastro, is when the whole neighbourhood is out.
7. The Rastro. A huge Sunday morning flea market running downhill along Ribera de Curtidores. Go early, keep a hand on your bag, and treat it as a scene rather than a shopping trip.
8. Sunset at the Temple of Debod. A second-century BC Egyptian temple, given to Spain in 1968 and rebuilt in a park above the river. The views west over the Casa de Campo are the draw.
9. The Gran Vía. Madrid's early twentieth-century showpiece street, with its theatres and domed corner buildings. Walk it once, at dusk, and look up.
10. Madrid Río. A long park built over a buried motorway along the Manzanares, with bridges, cycle paths and the Matadero arts centre in an old slaughterhouse at its southern end.
11. A football stadium. The rebuilt Santiago Bernabéu runs stadium tours, and Atlético's Metropolitano is the other option. Match tickets sell out for the big games.
12. Churros with chocolate. Thick hot chocolate and fried dough at San Ginés, near Sol, which has been serving them since the nineteenth century. Late at night is traditional.

What we'd skip: the Mercado de San Miguel for a meal (it's handsome, but crowded and expensive for what it is), the open-top bus when the Metro is quicker, and Puerta del Sol beyond a quick look at the bear statue.